As new media developed, food scandals exposed by Internet cause consumers' concern and influence consumers' behaviors and emotional reactions. Therefore, the study of consumers' risk perception is instructive to improve the risk communication efficiency.Methods This paper was based on the survey data from 1 083 questionnaires of six cities, and showed the result of statistical and econometric analysis. Results According to the ranking of consumers' concern, diet hazard followed subsequently environment pollution, which was considered to be the greatest risk. In general, consumers' risk perceptions were above the average level. The information from network got high attention from consumers, and nearly 80% consumers thought such information was believable. Government and its portals, as the main information dissemination, got highest trust from consumers. Based on the structure model analysis, four latent variables had significant correlation with the route of risk perception. By the regression analysis, it was demonstrated that age, education level, and family income per month had significantly negative impact to consumers' risk perception.Conclusion It is important to utilize big data for exploring consumers' food safety risk perception at the national level, along with establishing interactive risk communication among consumers and government. Such researches are able to promote the positive role of network media in food safety co-regulation.